That brings us to Part II of today’s wargaming, which is an extremely handy roundup from Practical Politicking’s Tom Dougherty. He has his own race-by-race data, stacked up with Cook, Sabato, and Rothenberg. I am reproducing Tom’s chart in full here, but you’ll want to click over to PP for his invaluable links.

It’s almost enough to make a conservative weep. While Tom rates the chances of a GOP takeover at about 55.4% (with 18 seats in play, compared to Sean’s 17), that’s still within the Democrats’ ability to hold on. Five likely or leaning R races is not a comfortable place to be, even this early on.

But it gets worse.

AK, AR, CO, VA — these should be fairly easy pickings for the Grand Old Party, but the best of them are all tossups at this stage, and Udall as previously mentioned seems likely to win in CO. Cook and Rothenberg each have only four likely or leaning R races, not enough to win control. Sabato is the outlier at six.

How desperate is it? Dougherty also wrote an approving piece on an Ann Coulter column, and I found myself nodding along to dang near every word. Ann Coulter and me, kids — that’s one of the horsemen of the Apocalypse.

I’m not trying to get anyone down, but I am trying to be realistic. If one of Sean Trende’s likeliest scenarios is to come to pass, it’s going to come down to conservatives and libertarians in several states holding their noses and turning out to vote. The GOP could put up Zombie Nixon against Udall, and I would crawl over broken glass to vote for him. And that’s also considering Colorado Democrats have instituted same-day voter registration, meaning that they may now pretty much steal elections at will.

I don't disagree with much, if anything in this ...I simply think trying to tie a Romney loss to Obama to the need to attack sitting Senator in Kentucky for lack of "purity" is an imbecilic war plan for a nation facing an existential threat.

Romney losing does not equate to a witch winning or Ron Paul winning if he was nominated. It's a non-sequitur and a fallacious argument.

As is the baby tantrum argument that "McCain and Romney were 'forced down our throats' so THIS time we are going to crap all over the carpet because we want "pure" candidates in EVERY state, local and federal election.

We may not know who will eventually win, but witches and warlocks and low grade imbeciles are NOT a better choice than a near lock incumbent. Let's not be coy or disingenuous.

Pick the battles that make sense. Pick your best opportunities to fight the leftist fascists. Make a battle plan, not some drooling circle jerk that attacks everyone who doesn't march in absolute lockstep with the Einstein Purity Brigade.

Win the House and the Senate and let's get some power behind the force of law for Cruz, Lee, Sessions to fight with.

But picking fights in near certain win states is so stupid it defies credible defense. It's baby tantrum crap. And it needs to have a timeout.

It's as if we are fighting a 2 pronged attack against us: the DNC slander machine and the MSM. While they may be one and the same, the 1-2 punch they throw at us is often devastating. Witness the crumpling of our "candidates" at the first salvo: they stagger, mumble, apologize, and then they are gone. The DNC is using "Blitzkrieg" while the RNC is depending on the Maginot Line and constantly being outflanked. A strategy to destroy the DNC and the MSM simultaneously has to be developed somehow and I do not have the answer.

It's way too early to make predictions on individual races; eight months is an eternity in politics.

But if I had to make a guess, I'd guess the GOP will retain the House, and narrow the Dem majority in the Senate. Reid will still be in control in the Senate, but Boehner will be ousted in the House, and new Republican speaker will take over.

Obama will remain President, and will continue to ignore Congress, the Constitution, and the law. Nothing much will change until 2016, and then possibly for the worse. Conservatives, of course, will be blamed for everything.

The fact that these above polls suggest that Mary Landrieu can even be a possibility in winning the 2014 Senate seat for Louisiana, shows the polls aren't worth the paper they are written on. Louisiana has become a solid red state which has voted overwhelmingly Republican since the 2000 Presidential election. Mary Landrieu was one of the deciding votes on Obamacare and has almost consistently voted with Obama in just about every situation. Obama and Mary Landrieu are reviled in this state and would win the senatorial seat only if there is a third candidate, who would take the votes away from her Republican challenger, which of course, could happen, but is highly unlikely. What is likely is that Landrieu is on her way out!

So much advice based upon false assumptions, from all the bloggers this time. First of all in Presidential years you're lucky to get 40% of the electorate to turn out. 2016 isn't a presidential year, so you're lucky to get 20% to turn out to vote, even if their lives depended on it. So who are these 20% who vote? They're your hyper-partisans on both the left and right with a percent or two of "independents." Who wins? The side that gets their hyper-partisans to turn out to vote. Which side never debates the qualities of the candidates? The Left of course. Who ALWAYS argues over their candidates to the last minute? The Right. Who always threatens to withhold their vote? Hint, it isn't the Left. Pretty obvious who wins in that case? Now add to it DNC providing obscene amounts of attack ad money for their side with the RNC being a lot more stingy (ask Ken Cuccinelli who lost his Virginia Governors race thanks to DNC feeding millions to his opponent at the last minute for attack ads and the RNC giving Ken the finger) it becomes a slam dunk for the Left. As for those who might be wiling to run on the right, first they have to pony up large sums of cash themselves just to become a candidate. Next, only if they garner a whole lot of generous contributors to their campaign do they get party backing and maybe a little cash from the state or the national Republican Party, but along with it they have to take all that generous advice on how to run their campaign from the party that has been so successful all these many past years at the national level.

The Tea Party has it right in the long run. The Republican Party has to be completely revamped and restocked with new blood and people who see the world as it is not as they wish it to be. In the short term however, what to do? If we wait for the Republican Party to be transformed, it may be too late. So which is better? To not vote because the Right candidate isn't Right enough which translates into a full Left win and a continuing slide to hell, or voting for the Right, RHINO, who at least might be scared enough to listen to you and slow down the slide to hell enough to buy time to transform the party or create another that can effectively counter the Left. Those are our choices unless of course you are already convinced that nothing will save traditional American values save Civil War, which I for one hope you're not. Better to try anything else before neighbor starts killing neighbor in the quest for ideological purity.

I have studied the Civil War and the ante bellum years in detail and I pray we never go down that horrible path again, The Republican party in 2014, is similar to the Democratic Party in 1972, and the GOP of 1932. It needs to "find itself" and that will take time. "Stopgap" candidates might be the only way we can fight an organized retreat until we re-group effectively.

What difference will it make?Unless we are very fortunate indeed, based on the behavior of McConnell and the Senate 'Pubbies, they'll simply be "Democrat Lite:" Pro-Amnesty, pro-thriftless spending, pro-Big Government.

Choosing candidates in the primaries is only part of what needs to be happening right now. The more important part is reaching out to voters and convincing them that the conservative side of the aisle--whether populated by establishment figures or insurgents--has better answers for them. Who is working on that?

Agree with VJAC. The US economy went down hard in 2008. Have things gotten better? And I don't mean the stock market which is a horrible measurement of progress. Collapses create vacuums. What fills those vacuums is often worse than what existed before. Ex. Russia, 1917, the Ottoman Empire, 1918.

If the US is as usual luckier than it deserves, it will survive the Crashdue to the efforts of an _honest_ authoritarian regime coming topower, a 'circulation of Elites'; You all can then stop trying to predictthe popular vote, because there will not be one.

Spoken like a true 'Useful Idiot'.Men must be ruled, or to use George Washington's definition:"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire,a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a momentshould it be left to irresponsible action." Heinlein observed that the Rule of Law alternates with Ruleby Force as naturally as night and day; I did not believe it then,but now the actions of our government force me to agree.If you need further education, find an officer serving in our militaryand ask him if the military is a dishonest regime.Then ask him what he would do if given unconstitutional orders.